Jimmy Golub creates art with creative planting

Bugs Bunny is the theme of this year's corn maze at Jimmy Golub' Our Farm on Peth Road, Cazenovia.Submitted photo

By Ken Sturtz
Contributing writer

Jimmy Golub is quick to point out that he is not an artist, but that hasn’t stopped him from designing and creating more than a dozen sprawling corn mazes over the years that appear to be quite artistic.

Using what amounts to a 12 foot wide brush, Golub has created corn maze designs on a five-acre field at Our Farm, that he and his wife, Janine, own in the town of Cazenovia. He began by building a generic corn maze with no design to complement the pumpkins and hayrides, petting zoo and crops at their farm. Golub thought of creating a maze with a specific shape after he saw a turtle-shaped maze in a magazine.

“I looked and I said ‘You know I think I could do that,’” he said.

In 2000, a few weeks after carefully planting his corn, Golub snapped a picture during a flyover in a plane. The image resembled a train locomotive. The idea was a hit with visitors to the farm and every year since Golub has created a new image in corn. In 2001 he made an outline of New York state which, it turned out, drew an emotional response in the wake of Sept. 11. After that, he tried to design the maze around a theme and tie it in with an educational component for the droves of school children that visit each year.

“Coming up with the idea is the hardest part really,” Golub said.
But Golub likes to let his mind wander and when he’s not thinking about it, usually gets a new idea. Everything from a horse, an eagle and a rabbit, to an ice cream cone, guitar and giant’s footprints has graced the corn field.

Golub is often asked how he gets his mazes to resemble various images, which can be very detailed. Unlike many maze builders who plant a thick crisscross of corn and hack out the maze later using flags as a guide, he prefers to plant corn in the shape he wants to create. Months in advance he decides on an image and sketches it onto graph paper.

Later he paces out and marks the dimensions with flags, and begins planting. Instead of an image being buried inside a corn maze, the image is the corn maze, he said. It’s a subtle distinction, but one Golub claims makes a better finished product.

Still, the image he chooses must be relatively simple so it can be easily recognized. In years past, some of the more complicated designs have been harder to recognize, Golub said. But with a simpler image comes the knowledge that any mistakes will be very noticeable.

He said he uses several tricks to ensure the image appears properly. One is replanting spots in the corn field that don’t come up. The other is doing some touch up work with a weed-eater to shape the image.

Each year, Golub takes two plane rides over the field. One is to see which areas need work, and the second is to snap a picture of that year’s design.

Without it, visitors have a tough time understanding the theme the image represents, he said. The design is nearly impossible to see from the ground.

Golub said the effort really pays off when he sees the finished maze from the air each year.